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Gene Day Award nominees, Hall of Fame inductees Announced

Final Nominees Announced for Gene Day Award, HALL OF FAME Inductees Named

Toronto, Canada — May 26, 2010.

Since it was established in 2004, the Joe Shuster Award has been Canada’s national awards program for recognizing the outstanding achievements of Canadian comic book creators, publishers and retailers. The awards are named after pioneering Toronto-born artist Joe Shuster who, along with writer Jerry Siegel, created the iconic super-powered hero, Superman.

The winners of the 2010 Joe Shuster Awards will be announced at a free admission public ceremony in Toronto starting at 8PM on the evening of Saturday, June 5th, 2010 at the University of Toronto’s Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue. The Master of Ceremonies will be Jonathan Llyr. The presentation ceremony date also coincides with the 6th Annual Toronto ComiCON Fan Appreciation Event at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on June 5 & 6, 2010.

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CANADIAN COMIC BOOK CREATOR HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

In honour of the 35th Anniversary of the publication of CAPTAIN CANUCK #1 in 1975, the three creators most closely associated with the character will be added to the Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame: including co-creator and writer/artist/publisher Richard Comely, artist George Freeman and artist Claude St. Aubin, all of whom are being included for their many contributions to the Canadian comics community since the 1970’s (not just for Captain Canuck).

In addition to the Captain Canuck trio of Comely, Freeman and St. Aubin, the Hall of Fame Selection Committee also selected three individuals with long and varied contributions to comics and comic book publishing in Canada – Cartoonist and animator Serge Gaboury, Publisher Deni Loubert, as well as Writer and Retailer Dave Darrigo (who also co-founded these awards in 2004).

Full biographies of the inductees will be published on this site after the ceremony on June 5th.

The 2010 inductees were selected by: Scott Dutton, Joe Kilmartin, Phil Latter, and Robert Pincombe. Thanks to John Bell and Bob MacMillan for their input in the early stages of the selection process.

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THE GENE DAY AWARD

Gene Day

We are honoured to announce the nominees for the Gene Day Award for Canadian Self-Publishing, which honours Canadian comic book creators or creative teams who self-published their work during the previous calendar year. In order to qualify for the award, the creators must be a citizen and current resident of Canada who wrote and/or illustrated a comic book of their own creation (includes creative teams), which they published and sold independently and did not have said works initially distributed by a third party distributor.

The winner of the Gene Day Award also receives a $500 bursary from the Awards Association.

The Gene Day Award for Canadian Self-Publishers / Le Prix Gene Day pour Éditeurs Direct Canadian de Bandes Dessinées

Nominees for the Gene Day Award were selected by members of the Award Association’s Executive Committee. The nominees were selected from over 60 individual publications submitted for review.

About Gene Day (1951-1982)

Gene Day (1951-1982) began his career in the Canadian alternative comix scene, working with and encouraging a new generation of Canadian comic creators create their own comics. In the seventies he began his own publishing imprint, Shadow Press / House of Shadows and put out over twenty issues of Dark Fantasy, a horror/fantasy/sci-fi digest that featured the early writings of Joe Lansdale, Charles De Lint, John Bell and Charles R. Saunders, amongst others; a short-lived comic publication, Out of the Depths and various other one-shots, portfolios, and prints. Those early roots led Day to be noticed my larger publishers, Day continued working in comics until his untimely death. Dave Sim credits Gene Day as his earliest and most influential mentor and the inspiration for his own self-publishing efforts. Gene Day was inducted into the Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame in 2007.

About Master of Ceremonies Jonathan Llyr

Jonathan Llyr is one of the most recognizable geeks in Canada today. As host of the nationally broadcast SPACE Channel’s SPACEY AWARDS for their first five years, Jon earned the respect of Hardcore Nerds everywhere when, over the years, Richard Dean Anderson had him ‘thrown off’ the set of STARGATE SG-1 (with a bonus instruction of “one shot to the kneecaps”), Bruce Campbell attacked him in the woods behind his house with a chainsaw, and Katie Sackhoff let him climb into her Viper.

Jon got his start on TV in 1998, after years of honing his skills as a professional actor and the artistic director of the Shakespearean theatre company, Tempest Theatre Group, SPACE needed someone who would wear a rubber turtle shell on his head (shades of Alan Rickman in GALAXY QUEST, anyone?) and it was a perfect fit. So, for several years, Jon appeared weekly on the cult TV show SPACEBAR as Grot, the loveably clueless alien barfly cum barkeep. Eventually trading shell for battered orange ball-cap, Jon was then seen five nights a week on DRIVE-IN CLASSICS as the genially pontificating drive-in theatre projectionist, Drive-in Dick – font of all B-movie knowledge and wisdom.

Jon’s subsequent stint as host, reporter and interviewer for HYPASPACE and HYPASPACE WEEKLY put him in close contact with stars like Patrick Stewart, Andy Serkis, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (at the same time in what proved to be an awesome media scoop!), David Hayter, Jolene Blalock, George Takei, Tricia Helfer, Steven Spielberg and many others.

Heading out into strange, new worlds with The HardcoreNerdity Network is his latest challenge.

None of this is surprising, considering Jonathan’s formative years. When he was a kid, his mom used to write him sick-notes so he could ditch school and line up on opening day for STAR TREK movies. She let him glue his Lego together in the shape of a phaser and paint it silver. She looked the other way when he put her good oven mitts on his feet so that he could be ‘Cornelius’ from PLANET OF THE APES. She made the rest of the family be quiet as he sat in front of the t.v., painstakingly making audio-cassette recordings of STAR TREK episodes so he could play them back at bedtime. That was in the days before VCRs. And when the family got one of those – Jon’s mom bought him his very first movie. It was SUPERMAN. And she let him stay home from school (again) to watch it before she wrapped it up as his Christmas present (he had to promise to look surprised when he opened it). So, really? This is all her fault.

About Joe Shuster (1914 – 1992)

With the permission of his estate, the Joe Shuster Awards are named in honor of the great artist, JOE SHUSTER (1914-1992), whose clear, dynamic style and inventive visual flourishes set the standard for graphic storytelling during the infancy of the North American comic book industry. It was Superman, a co-creation of Shuster and Siegel, which electrified the industry 71 years ago and, almost overnight, transformed comic books into an enormous pop-cultural phenomenon that endures to this day.

About The Joe Shuster Awards

Created in 2004, the Joe Shuster Awards are Canada’s first national achievement award program for Canadians working on comic books, graphic novels and webcomics. The Joe Shuster Award program is administered by the Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Association, a not-for-profit organization.

Just an FYI about the eligibility of Pope Hats by Ethan Rilly – Ethan self-published the comic in the spring of 2009 and it was available at some local shops and at public events like TCAF before he reached an agreement with publisher Adhouse Books to distribute the copies of his first issue to the Direct Market.

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ABOUT THE JOE SHUSTER AWARDS

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